GeologyRocks

2 months already since the last newsletter!? Time flies when you're busy. Welcome to the second GeologyRocks newsletter. This newsletter contains an update of new material on the site since last time and details on how to keep up-to-date with new content on the site. We close with some forthcoming news about the site, but we'll leave that until later.

New content

It's been a busy couple of months. We've had a new tutorial added by benauld on the use of diatoms as palaeo-environment indicators. The tutorial is an excellent introduction to this and is very good reading.

Hypocentre has updated his article on geology undergraduate courses for the coming year and added a similar article on taught postgraduate courses. These two articles are a very welcome addition to the site and are popular according to the visitor logs.

In the image section we've had a lot of images posted by javi_geo depicting a huge range of geology around Spain. Some of these are simply spectacular from an aesthetic and geological viewpoint. He has also added some images of modern geology - a very worthwhile addition as this is often overlooked.

The forums have pretty busy; the recent Kentish earthquake was an obvious talking point! The forums, blogs and polls are a very important part of the site which help build up a community that can create the unique content that make GeologyRocks what it is - one of the best geology sites on the web! Keep up the good work!

Keeping up-to-date with new content

The summary above is only a small highlight on what is new on the site. In the last two months we've had a total of 142 pages added with around 291 comments. How can you keep up to date with all this; especially as GeologyRocks is only going to get busier? Luckily the site has a wide range of tools to keep you informed. We'll take a look at them here.

Tracker

The most obvious tool is called the tracker. This is a list of all content on the site arranged in reverse chronological order of the last change (update or comment) to a page. This list can be filtered to include only forum topics, blog posts or content you have created or commented on. Each page that has had a comment added, been updated or is new since your last visit will be highlighted as such. To access your tracker, simply click on the recent posts link in your personal menu. A page is only marked as read once you have visited the page. If you don't view the page, it will remain labelled as new.

Subscribe

The tracker requires you to actually visit the site. Subscriptions can be made to an individual page (such as a tutorial, forum topic, image, etc), to a category (such as all images of type “sedimentary”, forum topics in the “site” category, etc) or by page type (such as all blog posts). Each time a page or comment is added that matches one of your subscriptions an email is sent. Be warned though, if someone posts 20 separate forum topics and they are all replied to, you will receive a lot of email! Whenever you add a page (forum topic and blog post included) you will be subscribed to that page automatically. You can turn off this behaviour in your user preferences. You can also view all your subscriptions in your profile.

Content notification

Content notifications are a summary of subscriptions sent and if you don't mind waiting for an update of material these may be better for you. An email is sent daily with links to all new pages and any new comments. Again, the notification settings can be altered in your profile.

RSS feed

GeologyRocks has several RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. The master feed can be accessed by clicking the RSS symbol () on the bottom of the left hand menu. This feed contains material that Katie or I promote there. It does not contain all new material and will not contain any new comments. However, as RSS feeds can be checked automatically they can be very useful. There are also feeds that relate to page categories, including each forum category – you will see the symbol wherever a feed is available.

Feed readers are built into modern browsers, such as FireFox, but you can also download and install specialist applications for reading feeds.

A good list for Windows users can be found here: http://email.about.com/cs/rssfeedreaders/tp/top_rss_windows.htm

Forthcoming Events

GeologyRocks 3 was a big change in terms of how the site works. Inevitably, not all changes worked well and some additions have rendered some of the older content redundant. In addition, the new style does not perform well in older browsers. To remedy the remaining problems, the site will undergo maintenance over a weekend in June. This will result in a slightly modified look, a few additional features, and a re-arrangement of some content. The changes will greatly benefit the site and will make using it even easier to use.

More details will follow nearer the time, but feel free to email in any comments you have beforehand.

Well that's it for another newsletter. We hope you've found it interesting. If you have any suggestions for what to include in future newsletters, please contact us.